Kevin McEvenue's Wholebody Focusing Blog
“When a part of me is able to feel loved, it awakens to its own healing!”
Sunlight illuminates
my friends, the trees
their trunks, their limbs.
How lucky am I
to be able to turn
to see these gnarled trees
through this train window
stopped
waiting
for some unseen obstruction
ahead
Sunlight illuminates
my friends, the trees
their trunks, their limbs.
Orange-khaki-colored brush
crouches in front of them
Unashamed of their winter attire
Take me as I am
they signal in their own
private language
I have no need for adornments.
I am here.
That is enough.
Elizabeth Morana
I don’t want to be put into a box and embalmed with chemicals that won’t let me become the earth. I hope someone who is not scared of death – someone who can feel their own ground and aliveness – will be brave and stay with me for a while, just until I am cold and gone. Then they can put me in the earth until my bones become dust.
When I was young my Mother died.
Recently I had an experience with a little bird that made me think about it. I wish I had known how to be grounded and present then.
Today I held a dead bird in the palm of my hand. The cat bought it in to me. I picked it up and gently held it.
At first I hoped it would come to life, maybe it was feigning death to protect itself. I moved my hand so it could feel the sun -maybe that would help. I tried to will it back to life.
It felt very sacred. I could feel the life in my hand and hoped the bird could feel it too.
I remembered my Mother dying when I was young and wished I would have touched her body – like I was with the bird – while it was still warm. I wished I hadn’t wanted to get away quickly. I wished I had put my head on her heart and my hand on her face. I wish I had of loved her more. Death was scarier then.
I stayed with the bird and all that was happening in this moment – my memory of my Mother’s death, the birds death, my aliveness and the aliveness I could hear and feel all around me.
I remembered them coming and putting coins on her eyes. That was weird. I didn’t like that. Why couldn’t we look at her eyes. The birds eyes were beautiful to look at. But death was scary then.
The cat walked past. I wanted to be mad at it. Then I thought, well, it just did what it naturally does. Just like the cancer did in my Mum. I gently put the bird in the garden and remembered its bones will turn into dust and then it will be the earth.
I don’t want to be put into a box and embalmed with chemicals that won’t let me become the earth. I hope someone who is not scared of death – someone who can feel their own ground and aliveness – will be brave and stay with me for a while, just until I am cold and gone. Then they can put me in the earth until my bones become dust.
Then I will be the earth too.
I am sorry Mum x.
Photo Credit: Pixaby
Sharing this Heartfelt blog together seems to bring more in each one of us. That is my experience—enjoying what you have added to us from your direct experience of life shared with us.
Recently I had a very powerful experience with another person, a person who I regularly meet when I come to get my medication filled. Usually I ignore such moments, but this time I did something different again. I allowed my body-self to take it in.
Later, in a private moment, I allowed this experience to return and to give it the time it needed to be fully appreciated for what it was for me. Suddenly the felt sense of the moment came so alive, so powerful that it overwhelmed me and seemed to scream; “A connection is happening here!” My body seemed filled with passion and a desire that felt so satisfying when I could find my ground. All because I stopped and allowed that simple connection to complete itself rather than walk away before it had a chance to become more fully present.
I invite you again to join me and Pause and notice an everyday connection that demands attention. Perhaps it will be someone you don’t know and yet this powerful connection feels so good and you wonder why! Maybe you could spend time with it and let it show you why!
Kevin McEvenue
Video Credit: Horseshoe Falls by Elizabeth Morana
Water sometimes has to go
over a ledge and
drop
without knowing
what comes next
you panic
there is nothing to
hold onto
no email with information
you needed
to orient you
The drops of water
too are disoriented
they rely
without forethought
on gravity
They don’t know
which way is up
either
Oh, Angels!
Teach me to be like
Water
Elizabeth Morana
I had just gotten on a bus and a lady offered me her seat. The normal reaction would be simply, “Oh! she is being so nice.” But something more unfolded between us.
A moment of kindness that felt so satisfying.
We have been practicing moments of Wholebody Focusing and Heartfelt Connection with one another in enjoying these blogs, awakening something very special in each of us. I know I have. And some of those moments stay with me and enrich and expand my own life experience in me and around me–often in very unexpected ways. Here is a moment like this when I was able to Pause and enjoy the moment–as several of you have suggested.
In this recording, I want to share an unexpected kindness that happened in a situation that felt so deeply touching and satisfying and so uninvited. The situation was really quite ordinary. I had just gotten on a bus and a lady offered me her seat. The normal reaction would be simply, “Oh! she is being so nice.” But something more happened because I was open to actually feel the body connection unfolding between us, and I was able to step back and become aware of what was happening–happening without a single word being spoken, but deeply felt.
I would like to invite you to stay with me and join me in this kind of event which may have happened to you too, and maybe awakened a similar bodily felt connection that seemed heartfelt and so satisfying. Kevin.
Before I know it I have lost myself, I am not solid.
I am hard on myself and I need to break the spell of that.
When the overwhelm sets in, it takes over my body.
Before I know it I have lost myself, I am not solid.
I am like a leaf being blown around in a storm.
I am lost. I have no home base.
When I can break the spell of the panic, the overwhelm, the negative thoughts – I feel wider, softer. I have freedom to move.
The reward from doing that is that I can hear the birdsong and the wind in the trees.
I am available to experiencing life in the here and now.
How I break it is to pause, to slow down, to remember to come back to myself, my surroundings, my breath, the beauty that is there for me as a solid support – 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks of every year.
Not as a technique that I have learned and must get right, must do a certain way. If I do that, I am going against the unique way my body knows and desires to be.
If I do that, then the trying hard sets in, the sense of failure, I don’t get it, can’t do it.
The words come in and beat me up.
I must pause and find some sense of solidity that is outside me.
I simply pause and wait for the right way for me that is coming from my own unique bodily knowing of how to be in this world.
Finally – I can trust me.
I can break the spell like that and then the magic of the birdsong will appear for me, and I can breathe out.
Because I can trust me and my body knowing of what it needs,
I can trust you and your body knowing.
I know you will find your own unique way that is just right for you.
Thank you Kevin.
A situation happened recently that felt so uncomfortable that I couldn’t leave it alone. I just had to address it and so I did. It was a very familiar event—having dinner with somebody or a group of people and walking away feeling so unsatisfied, hating every moment of it.
In fact, I realized I could kvetch for days and I would still remain unsatisfied. This time, I did something quite different. I paused and found a safe place to ask my body what was so unsatisfying here? And when I could pause like that, I could feel my body appreciating the question and it felt very present in a different way than the usual chatter of thinking about something I don’t like, and why!
This is what came, being with that kind of ‘background feeling’ at a dinner gathering where I came away feeling so very unsatisfied wondering why, again! What came was a real surprise and left me feeling in a very different place!
Join me here and see what comes for you in this kind of situation where you’re feeling either uncomfortable or more—unsatisfied.
Actually, they might feel slightly different. Feeling unsatisfied often points to the possibility of what it would feel like to feel fully satisfied. Feeling uncomfortable seems more like doing something, like making a list about what to do about it, but not necessarily point to something that could change the body experience, more like a quick fix to get rid of that feeling.
In this recording, I discover something very different as a possibility I never dreamed of.
Enjoy! Kevin
I felt a shift in me that was so palpable. I knew something in me had fundamentally changed. It was like now I see the world upside-down or down-side-up—that kind of change of perception.
I’m envisioning a Daily Practice in Wholebody Focusing: to embody and sustain that sense of Me-Here as a body-sense of my Self as the foundation place—an Inner-Directed Experience of who I am and what I want to do.
Over the years, it has become clear to me that we seem to desire to start with an Intunement, to begin to have a fresh sense of ourselves as a Wholebody Focusing experience—to get in touch with what might be there in us right now.
How am I? What is going on right now? How can I make room for that? –that kind of attention. We seem to need some kind of solid grounding, something that we can hold onto, to allow those kinds of questions to emerge.
We usually start with some form of an Intunement to find that place in us that awakens what naturally wants to come alive and to inform us about ourselves and what is happening when it feels safe enough to do so!
It works when we can do this, and a sense of gratitude often follows when we spend time with ourselves in this way. It also initiates a relationship—it is not just a thought, it is an experience of me and something out there, a not-me, that together awakens a sense of feeling alive to myself beyond stuck-me! Continue reading “Beginning a Wholebody Focusing Practice”
